How do I mark an item as 'Unread' in Google Reader?

Question

I'd like to be able to mark individual posts as Unread.

UPDATE 1: Some of you have let me know that the option exists at the bottom, but it simply doesn't in my view:

UPDATE 2: It seems only older posts are missing the ability to mark as unread. Newer posts have the functionality.

Answer 1

Items older than 30 days can't be marked as unread. You'll still see them in your Saved items list but they're automaticaly read and can't be Unread.

Answer 2

at the bottom of the feed item there is a list of commands and one of them is "Keep Unread"

or you can just press the m key to toggle the read/unread status of that item

In regard to items not being available to mark unread after 30 days (i did not know this)...one approach to get around this is to use a service such as instapaper to save articles for later reading.. and to go even further you can grab an RSS feed for your instapaper account and load that as a feed into Google Reader so you can see all of your "unread" items in instapaper in one feed.. this is what I do

Answer 3

Each post has a Keep unread option at the bottom.

Answer 4

I had a similar problem today and found this question. I had accidentally hit "Mark all as read" and found that the "Mark as unread" button had disappeared from both my laptop and phone.

This worked for me: I clicked the drop down arrow next to "Mark all as read" and chose "Items older than two weeks". Then I was able to get the "Mark as unread" button back on the two posts I was worried about.

It seems google treats "Mark all as read" as some sort of permanent condition.

Answer 5

This can happen if you are using some other application to read google reader items, say for example Reeder on the iPad/iPhone. I think it's a bug, and I don't have a solution.

So, am I right in guessing you are using Reeder, or some other app?

Answer 6

I only get the Keep Unread option on posts from the last two days, so I think the rationale is that you use this when you have a quick look at a recent post and decide to read it later, and if you want to keep track of older posts, you can star them.

Answer 7

Hmm, could it be Google is A-B-testing on us? I definitely still have the "Keep unread" option on some really old items...

What I do notice however is that there appears to be no way back once you've hit the "Mark all as read" button: Any item that was marked as read in this manner (rather than by actively opening and reading it) cannot be brought back into unread state ever.

Answer 8

This is also a possible scenario as it happens to me each time. If I just browse through a few items of one feed and decide to mark them ALL as read, the "keep unread" option will then disappear for those items in the feed.